Over the next two years an increased number of young Hungarians will be assigned to the Hungarian diaspora around the world to help Hungarian communities preserve their identity and language, Janos Árpád Potápi, the state secretary for ethnic Hungarian communities abroad, has said.

According to MTI, up to 115 young Hungarian scholarship-holders will be sent to 24 countries on five continents for six to nine months under the Kőrösi Csoma Sándor program launched in 2013.

Under the Petőfi Sándor program launched in 2015, a total of 65 people will travel to Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Macedonia, the southern region of Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine, for nine months.

The number of participants in the two schemes was altogether 151 in the 2015/16 program year. The amount earmarked in the central budget for the two schemes is 1.5 billion HUF, or 4.9 million euro.